Robin Hobb

Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden (born March 5, 1952; née Lindholm), known by her pen names Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, is an American writer of speculative fiction.

As Hobb, she is best known for her fantasy novels set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which comprise the Farseer, Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies, the Rain Wild Chronicles, and the Fitz and the Fool trilogy.

Lindholm's writing includes the urban fantasy novel Wizard of the Pigeons and science fiction short stories, among other works.

, her fiction has been translated into 22 languages and sold more than 4 million copies.

Born in California, Lindholm grew up in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and married a mariner at age eighteen.

The Alaskan wilderness and the ocean were prominent aspects of her life, influencing her writing.

After an early career in short fiction, at age thirty Lindholm published her first novel while working as a waitress and raising children.

Margaret Astrid Lindholm was born in Berkeley, California, in 1952; from the age of ten, she grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska.

She recalls growing up in the middle of an oil boom in Alaska, which led to a rapid growth in population of the rural town she lived in.

A shortage of classroom space caused some of her high school classes to be held in staircases.

Lindholm did not like how the town's urbanization intruded on the nature trails around her house, which she had enjoyed exploring, but said her childhood was overall a happy one and described herself as more of a solitary than social child.

Her family raised a half wolf called Bruno and hunted caribou and moose; this would later inspire the wolf character Nighteyes and the descriptions of wilderness survival in Lindholm's writing.

After graduating from Lathrop High School, she studied at the University of Denver for a year before returning to Alaska.

At eighteen, Lindholm married Fred Ogden, a merchant mariner; they had been dating for a year.

The couple moved to Hawaii; they lived there for more than a year, but found it too hot to acclimate to and returned to Fred's hometown of Kodiak, located at the tip of Kodiak Island in south-central Alaska.

Margaret enjoyed journeying on Fred's ships and said the sea was a prominent aspect of her life, inspiring the maritime focus of her Liveship books.

She published her first novel at age thirty, while working as a waitress, and balanced between writing and caring for her four children while her husband worked offshore as a commercial fisherman.

The family experienced financial difficulties at the time and said their income "depended entirely on fish and editors".

Margaret described her writing process as: "writing fits into odd corners. It's during the naptime, it's sitting by the bath tub writing, it's writing after the children are in bed".

She also worked part-time, including in waitressing and mail delivery, early in her career.

In the 1970s, Lindholm also began to write short fantasy, publishing short stories in fanzines such as Space and Time (edited by Gordon Linzner).

Hobb's work has appeared under several pen names: as M. Lindholm and Megan Lindholm from 1979, and as Robin Hobb from 1995.

The change from Margaret, her first name, to Megan was due to a misunderstanding with her first editor.

Megan Lindholm's writing received critical praise, including Hugo and Nebula ward nominations for her short fiction, but did not sell well.

Her first professional sale as a fantasy writer was the short story "Bones for Dulath", which appeared in the 1979 Amazons! anthology, and which introduced her recurring characters Ki and Vandien.

The first work to bring her recognition was the 1986 novel Wizard of the Pigeons, a liminal fantasy set in Seattle.

A forerunner of the urban fantasy genre, it received praise for Lindholm's depiction of understated magic and poverty.

Her science fiction novella "A Touch of Lavender" was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

While critically well received, Lindholm's work did not sell well and she began writing under the pen name Robin Hobb in 1995.

Hobb achieved commercial success with her debut work under this pseudonym, the Farseer trilogy.

An epic fantasy told as a first-person retrospective, it has been described as a character-driven and introspective work.

In 1995, the author started writing in a new fantasy subgenre and deliberately chose an androgynous pen name, Robin Hobb, for her new work written as a first-person male narrator.

Her writing as Hobb was commercially successful, and has appeared on New York Times bestseller lists.

She continues to write under both Hobb and Lindholm bylines.

Lindholm sold her first short story to a children's magazine, leading to an early career writing for children.

Her short fiction for children appeared in magazines such as Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and Highlights for Children.

She also composed educational material, short works of fiction created to a very specific vocabulary list, which were used in SRA's programmed reading material.

Hobb went on to write four further series set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which received praise from critics for her characterization, and in 2005 The Times described her as "one of the great modern fantasy writers".

Through her writing, Hobb explores otherness, ecocentrism, queerness, and gender as themes.

She concluded the Elderlings series in 2017 and won the World Fantasy Award—Life Achievement in 2021.